After regulation exploded in 1970, innovation hit a sustained speed bump.
"In the United States, which drove most of the “golden quarter’s” progress, 1970 marks what scholars of administrative law (like me) call the “regulatory explosion.” Although government expanded a lot during the New Deal under FDR, it wasn’t until 1970, under Richard Nixon, that we saw an explosion of new-type regulations that directly burdened people and progress: The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, the founding of Occupation Safety and Health Administration, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, etc. — all things that would have made the most hard-boiled New Dealer blanch."
Within a decade or so, Washington was transformed from a sleepy backwater (mocked by John F. Kennedy for its “Southern efficiency and Northern charm”) to a city full of fancy restaurants and expensive houses, a trend that has only continued in the decades since. The explosion of regulations led to an explosion of people to lobby the regulators, and lobbyists need nice restaurants and fancy houses.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that progress suddenly slowed down, but I don’t think so. Indeed, the Obama administration ’s brilliantly successful policy for promoting private spaceflight ventures (basically one of benign neglect) can be seen as evidence that we can actually get the kind of progress we used to get, when we regulate lightly, like we used to. Who knows, if we regulated pharmaceuticals like we did in the early 1960s, perhaps we’d get as many major new drugs as we got in the 1960s. (“The time for a new drug candidate to gain approval in the United States rose from less than eight years in the 1960s to nearly 13 years by the 1990s,” notes Hanlon.)
Of course, excessive regulation isn’t just slowing technological progress, it’s also making us poorer. A recent study from the Mercatus Center found that the increase in federal regulation since 1980 has reduced economic growth by 0.8% per year — which over time means that the economy by 2012 would have been 25% larger, adding up to about $13,000 more for every American. The number would be much bigger, if they’d used 1970 as their baseline.
27 comments:
Under Obama, DC became the wealthiest city in the US. In the 70's, about 25% of people leaving Congress became lobbyists. Now it's 72% and climbing annually. Lobbying won't change under Trump. He's used the system to his advantage and it will continue. Now, you Trump fans["fan" is short for fanatic], don't go fucking mental on me. I don't think any candidate could do away w/ lobbying.
Lem, it is good when you post original stuff, like your roof pictures.
Posting crap from alcoholic commie law profs is idiotic and derivative.
Original, good. Cut and paste, bad.
Hopefully, in my lifetime, I will see the "Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy.." become reality.
This is the biggest thing that has happened to our nation in our lives, and the root of nearly all that changed us from the spearhead of humanity into a bureaucracy laden pig so feckless it can't wipe its own ass without endless inspections, permissions, a ream of forms, and a website. We raced the world forward with spectacular achievements with nothing more than a pad and a #2 pencil in just a few generations, and then suddenly we accepted new phone apps and reality TV as the vanguard of our achievement. Unfortunately, the rest of humanity is following us down that path, or maybe the West really was something special before we killed it with safety and sloth. It was work hard and play hard, but always work hard, which now is some kind of embarrassment or deficiency. Today everything is about following the rules which is the only thing we create new in any quantity. Despite our imagined and self-satisfied opinion that boomers have been a great force for good, we managed to crap on it with our control freak so bad that we destroyed our own legacy and maybe the species as a whole.
I say nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
It's FRIDAAAAAYYYYYYY!
What a crock of shit - all that from a guy who thinks that illegals should be allowed to arrive here in an endless stream and use our resources all because, well, they were to fucking stupid to fix their own 8th world shit holes.
Go back to being a coyote - you are better at that than thinking logically.
Good to see you, bags. Welcome back.
Maybe flying cars are a little harder to achieve than a pad and a #2 pencil, but who says we can't get rid of some of those regulations.
What Reynolds fails to note is a lot of the regulations from the New Deal were swept away by the Reagan Revolution, which led to the spectacular growth of the 80s.
Of course, as a Libertarian, Insta would then have to want Donald Trump to do what Reagan did*.
* I was by his place a couple of days ago out of curiosity and noticed a lot fewer posts by Driscoll, so there may be hope.
Drones aren't bad enough, now we have to have flying cars? Do the birdies get a vote?
Flying Cars!? QUIET! You'll scare the millenials. If there were such a thing, you'd have to hire someone to walk 10 feet in front with a lantern.
Oh and welcome back Bago.
It really sucks that we don't have flying cars but how the hell did Hillary end up with flying monkeys.
If you ever saw "Wicked", you'd know it had nothing to do with the Emerald City.
Glad to see you back bags. If I said or did anything that was out of line I apologize.
I was promised a flying car when I was a kid and I'm still fucking waiting!!!
Meth, you may get it yet.
The Donald's energy policy guru is a pro-drilling Global Warming skeptic.
edutcher said...
Meth, you may get it yet.
The Donald's energy policy guru is a pro-drilling Global Warming skeptic.
This can't happen fast enough. I can just hear HRC weeping about the erf.
I get the distinct feeling we'll be on Plan C by November.
If Joe and Fauxcahontas are Plan B and they're not playing well, would Moochelle be the next most desperate choice?
PS How much of the black vote can the Demos afford to lose?
(I have a reason for asking - keep in mind blacks are only about 11% of the population)
Everyone knows that percentages are racist.
It had nothing to do with my recent absence here, but since I talked of her often, I should let you know that my incredible, unstoppable Mom finally stopped 2 weeks ago, and passed away at home with all her family there at her side. In fighting cancer for 11 years, she had multiple surgeries that removed things that she clearly did not need anyway, since she would recover quickly and never slowed down. She was still running her own life and driving herself around right up until the last few weeks when she took a fall and caught pneumonia which she never really sprang back from. She just turned 83.
She started out a young mother of 17, and after having two children, her first husband tried to kill them all with a gun in a suicidal standoff with cops. While the cops distracted him, she ran out the back door with the kids and escaped unharmed. Then as a single mom of 19, she got a job heating rivets, which she was taught by my grandmother, who was the original Rosie the riveter, and who later operated a crane in a steel mill taking over for my grandfather during WWII. Later my dad taught Mom to weld, and she did that right along side the men for 25 years building railroad cars for Pullman Standard Co.
She eventually buried four husbands while raising four kids, always managing somehow to maintain a safe, fun, and liberating home where we were free to explore and always encouraged to be independent and courageous with little strife or drama. We respected her so much that we needed little more than a look from her to put us back in line. In the last year, she drove herself back and forth from Florida to L.A. twice, including just a month before her death. I've never been so impressed with anyone in my life, and I know that is only partly due to my natural love of her. I love her at least as much for the kind of woman she chose to be. She was an inspiration for me and set the standard in how to handle challenges and setbacks that I can only strive to approximate. The most wonderful gift a kid can get from a parent: freedom and example.
My prayers for you and your family, bags. I believe your mother is w/ God and not in need of prayers. I'm sorry she didn't make it to Mother's Day. I'm sure Mother's day a few days ago was melancholy, as will be all Holidays for awhile. She raised a good son. I'm sure if that were all she did that would have been fine w/ her.
It's a hard thing, bag, but she's an inspiration that she never gave up.
I am so sorry to hear about Mom bags. She will be in my prayers this Sunday at Mass and I will light a candle in her memory to the Blessed Mother.
Just about the toughest thing in life is to lose a parent. Just know that she loved you and is in a better place. God bless you and your family.
Thanks, guys. I really appreciate all that. I never told her that I talked about her here. She would have liked it though. I just spent half the day welding and teaching guys to weld (we have a few girls that weld here too). A lot of what I do for a living is the same as my parents did. I seem drawn to metal work for some reason, which was never my plan or my parents plan for me.
I only weld TIG and MIG - the clean easy welding. My mom welded the big stick, giant arc, smokey, flying hot ambers stuff that frankly scares me. She would go to work looking like a man in overalls and a bandanna, and come home with holes all through her clothes, but at night she always dressed up and put on her make up. As an older woman she always looked good and was made up all day long like she was expecting company. My female friends have always been impressed with her femininity despite being a tough broad. She was exceptional, and I was exceptionally luck by birth.
You should write about her bags. Your memories of her. The things she said. The things she did. I know they are immortalized in your mind but it is a good way to help the process. You don't have to share it with anyone. Just put it in a notebook and every day that you think about her or an incident in your life reminds you of her you can put it down. It is the best kind of remembrance.
I have been trying to do that. With both my parents and the wifes. Her father was a fire fighter in the worst part of the 70's and he has so many great stories. We taped some of his stories and wrote up a few. Family memories are precious. It is a great way to keep them alive in your heart.
I'm chuckling bags. As I read your comment about "TIG. MIG," I just flashed to a great scene in the flick, No Country for Old Men. Few people write dialogue as well as the Coen Brothers. The scene is where the Woody Harrelson bounty hunter character[Carson Wells] is chatting up the Brolin[Llewellen Moss] character. Woody keeps peppering Brolin w/ technical welding questions and Brolin, a welder, gets increasingly annoyed. I bet your mom would have, or maybe did, like that scene. Burying 4 husbands is not fair. But, nobody ever said life was fair. However, your mom was blessed to not have to do what every parent fears most, bury a child. Look on it as one of God's tender mercies for your mom.
Bags, my heart is with you. You were missed and I'm sorry to hear of why now. She is in a far far better place if one is so inclined to believe that, but at the very least she lived a good life. Again, much love and peace to you and your family right now.
Bagoh - My deepest and sincerest condolences for your loss.
She lived her life to the max right up to the end. She must be an inspiration for you and your family. ... to any of us, really.
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